In tomorrow's SocietyGuardian section

• How health and social care agencies in Essex are joining forces to prevent older people having to go into hospital• The guilt that goes with having to justify mental distress can be almost as debilitating as the illness itself, says Clare Allan• Who will pay the price of CQC failure, asks Denis Campbell• The Youth Justice Board must find its voice, writes Rod Morgan• Former US economy tsar Jared Bernstein says the UK is following America down the road to excessive inequality • A short film raising funds for homelessness charities aims to tell the real story of people living on the streets

On my radar ...

• When is a donation not a donation? This eye-opening post on the Regretsy blog tells how PayPal has scuppered attempts to spread some Christmas cheer. Blogger Helen Killer set up a gift exchange programme, allowing supporters to buy presents on behalf of needy children, using PayPal's "donate" button. Killer and PayPal then entered into a debate about the use of the button and the difference between charity, non-profits and good causes. At one point in the discussion, PayPal told Killer:

"You can use the donate button to raise money for a sick cat, but not poor people."

• A moving viral campaign from charity Friends of the Elderly, which encourages people to think about how they feel about Christmas. In this video, people of all ages talk about what Christmas means to them, and others can share their thoughts on Twitter using the hashtag #christmasmeans. To coincide with the launch of the campaign, FotE has polled 2,000 people aged 16-65 and discovered that nearly one in four won't be including elderly relatives, neighbours or community members in their plans over the festive season. The charity predicts that 500,000 older people will spend Christmas alone this year.

• Campaigner Beatrice Botomani, who has been honoured at Migration Yorkshire's Refugee of the Year awards. On our Northerner blog, Martin Wainwright reports that Botomani arrived in the UK in 2004 with her two children and has been working to help others in the same position:

One of her nastiest experiences was seeing the suffering of women and children in detention within the asylum system. With others, she successfully campaigned against child detention and then organised a refugee women's conference which was held last month, resourced on a self-help basis by local community organisations rather than seeking government funding or private money.Botomani also created a home-made 'sisters network' to win support from 60 prominent local women, tapped into the Bradford Women's Forum and is now training women to use local radio, through Bradford community Broadcasting's series BRASS – Bradford refugee and asylum seekers' stories. In case you think this is all a bit gender-biased, note that her son Wells and two friends won their own award in last year's UK Solution for the Planet School competition with a project called Yoob IT - You do your bit, and we do our bit.

• A fascinating post from Salon on city rankings. According to writer Will Doig, there are rankings for Best cities for Christmas, Best cities for vegans, Best cities for Nascar fans, Loneliest cities, Funniest cities, and Manliest cities. But, he argues, city rankings always get it wrong, and it should be all about how residents interact with their environment:

Cities are experiences as much as they are physical locations. They're not just places with a certain number of coffee shops or Apple stores or antidepressant users. Those data points may gesture in the general direction of a city's temperament, but what matters most to urban dwellers are the things that are much harder to nail down. A 2008 study that surveyed 43,000 people over a course of three years found that what attached them to their communities the most weren't the things that are easy to measure, like job availability or quality of schools. They were more ephemeral aspects, like openness, social offerings and aesthetics — "Very much the same qualities that make a good place and can only be measured qualitatively," says Ethan Kent, vice president of the Project for Public Spaces.Add to this the problem that many of these lists have an ulterior motive. "I think the objective of these lists is to get headlines in newspapers," says White. "Sometimes they're connected to a company — the best cities for dating will be compiled by a body-spray company." And just because they're citing stats doesn't mean their conclusions are bulletproof — the book "How to Lie With Statistics" has been a go-to reference since 1954 for this kind of stuff.In the end, the most value these lists probably have is that they can get people talking about issues. "In some respects it's helpful for the media to come up with new measures that may not be academically rigorous, but provoke a conversation," says Bruce Katz, director of the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "The more people don't take them at face value, but say, 'That's an interesting question,' the more valuable they may be."

• Blue dots. A former creative director of Comic Relief, Chris Ward, has launched a new "social currency". The Blue dots project "rewards" people for "good deeds", such as making a donation or promoting a charity on social media. Businesses and celebrities have provided the rewards (Noel Gallagher, Coldplay and JLS are among those who have already contributed) and some 9,000 charities are involved. Supporters can also build a "Blue dots CV", a record of charitable acts to show to prospective employers. The Blue dots team claims the Cancer Research UK marketing director believes that Blue dots can be what the Nectar card is to shopping.

• Question of the day: What advice would you give your 18-year-old self? Katy Robinson asked her friends, family and colleagues - and then created this great graphic

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